WALESA IS SEEKING A 2D POLISH POST

By STEPHEN ENGELBERG,

Published: October 30, 1991

Correction Appended

WARSAW, Oct. 29—
After a parliamentary election that showed both rising apathy and widespread voter dissatisfaction, President Lech Walesa offered tonight to serve as his own Prime Minister over a fragmented legislature.

The move, if accepted, would give the former shipyard electrician and Solidarity leader control over the country's two most powerful offices and was immediately condemned by some as a step toward one-man rule.

As he did so often during Solidarity's decadelong struggle against Communism, Mr. Walesa is again offering to take Poland's troubles on his broad back. But it is not immediately clear whether the political parties that have sprung up in two years of democracy will submit to his rough-and-tumble style of leadership.

Returns announced tonight showed that the seats in the Parliament had been divided among more than 25 parties, none of them holding more than 12 percent. With 98 percent of the votes counted, the Democratic Union, the center-left party that is a direct descendant of Solidarity and is led by former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and other Solidarity intellectuals, was running even with the party of former Communists, which calls itself the Democratic Left Alliance.

Each party had 12 percent of the votes and 48 seats in the 460-seat lower house, or Sejm. Closely behind with around 8 percent each were the Polish Peasants Party, once allied with the Communists; Church-backed parties like the Catholic Electoral Action, which supports a ban on abortion; the Center Alliance, the right-wing heirs of the Solidarity movement, and the Confederation for Independent Poland, which predates Solidarity and has also called for bringing Communists to account.

The Liberal Democratic Congress Party of Jan Krzysztof, the outgoing Prime Minister who supports a doctrinaire free market approach to the economy, also polled about 7 percent. No Obvious Majority

Polish political leaders have already acknowledged that there is no obvious majority that could be formed from the scattered results.

Mr. Walesa's proposal was announced by Andrzej Drzycimski, his press secretary, on the evening's main news program. The decision was apparently hastily reached. An earlier statement issued by the President in the midafternoon included no mention of Mr. Walesa's offer to serve as Prime Minister.

Throughout his political career, Mr. Walesa has been a master of strategy, able to think three and four steps ahead, first of his Communist adversaries and later of his detractors within Poland's post-Communist political scene. What everyone was pondering this evening was whether the offer reflected a genuine intention to take the reins of government in his hands or a high-pressure strategy intended to force the quareling factions emerging from Solidarity to cooperate with one another.

Mr. Drzycimski said Mr. Walesa had three possibilities in mind: A coalition of the parties emerging from the Solidarity movement led by a Prime Minister of their choice; a similar coalition with Mr. Walesa as Prime Minister and a two-year term, or Mr. Walesa with two years' grace as leader of a coalition of the top seven parties, with ministries apportioned on the basis of percentage strength in the elections. Positions for Ex-Communists

The last possibility appears to suggest that one-tenth of the positions would go to the former Communists ousted from power in 1989.

Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, a leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, or former Communists, said in an interview hours before Mr. Walesa's proposal that his party would prefer to remain in opposition, in part because it lacked partners to form a ruling majority. The Democratic Union, the Solidarity off-shoot cited by Mr. Cimoszewicz as one possible ally, has already ruled out such cooperation.

The former Communists finished near the top only because the vast majority of the electorate divided votes among a plethora of competing parties with strong anti-Communist histories and platforms. In fact, the Communist vote has stayed relatively constant, with the party scoring around 10 percent in the 1989 elections that brought Solidarity to power, 10 percent in last year's presidential elections, and 12 percent this year.

Surveys of voters as they left the polls indicated that the former Communists had drawn their support from professionals and managers who stood to lose the most if calls by Mr. Walesa and others for "de-Communization" of government and industry became reality. Only 6 percent of industrial workers voted for the Democratic Left Alliance, the survey said. Seeks Broader Powers

Under the Polish Constitution, Mr. Walesa has few executive powers beyond the naming of the Prime Minister. He has repeatedly called in recent months on the drafters of Poland's new constitution to grant him broader authority.

There was no indication that Mr. Walesa planned to seize the prime ministership without Parliament's approval. In his statement to Polish television, Mr. Drzycimski said the President would respect the "range of his powers," an apparent reference to the required Parliamentary vote for a new Prime Minister.

Mr. Walesa's proposal nonetheless evoked memories of Josef Pilsudski, the Polish President of the 1920's who has gone down in history as a hero for tossing aside a vacilliating Parliament and taking power himself.

Mr. Walesa, who keeps a statute of Pilsudski in his office, seemed well aware of the pitfalls of becoming his own Prime Minister. In an interview just three days before the election, he said his hints of becoming Prime Minister were not serious. 'I Would Feel Awful'

"It was a joke," he said. "I do not see myself as premier. I am not good at this. As a premier, I would most likely be a dictator. I would feel awful, unbearable, to be limited in doing what I believe is right. I think that the Sejm would have to dismiss me after a couple of months, because I would not respect laws incompatible with reality."

Jacek Kuron, the former university professor who was a close adviser to Mr. Walesa in the Solidarity years, said tonight that "I'm not all sure this a good solution."

Like many others, Mr. Kuron seemed a bit stunned by the proposition. Interviewed by Polish television shortly after a meeting with Mr. Walesa, Mr. Kuron added:

"This is an enormous political risk from his point of view. I don't know what position to take on this. I listened to him with complete satisfaction because he realizes full well that it should be a government that enjoys his full trust and in possession of a Parliamentary majority."

Correction: November 1, 1991, Friday Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about President Lech Walesa's offer to become Poland's Prime Minister misidentified the current Prime Minister. He is Jan Krzysztof Bielecki.